Homecoming
by ScareyQuinette
Summary: As the police close in on the Scarecrow, he flees to his childhood home with a hostage, Harley Quinzel, in tow. As Harley delves into the doctor's past, he decides to teach her about the real power of fear.
1. Chapter 1

When Harley woke, she found herself blinded by sunset – its orange glow disorientating her as she slowly stood. Straw prickled at the soles of her bare feet and for a moment she supposed that she must be in a barn. As her eyes adjusted to the light, however, she found that she had been mistaken. Her prison was a low-slung attic, or a part of one at least, as a windowless wall intersected the heavy oak beams in an unnatural place. There was little in the room, save an old dresser, half exposed under its filthy dust sheet; still someone had had the presence of mind to hang a crucifix on the wall.

With groggy steps, Harley made her way across the floor, splinters catching her from under the straw as she moved to peer out of one of the oriel windows that jutted from the roof. The view would have been quite beautiful, has its isolation not filled her with dread. For miles, all that Harley could see were fields in green and gold, spotted with the occasional black speck of a barn. On the horizon she saw the shadow of a town – its buildings a cluster of teeth dragging the sun down to fill its homes with bright light. It was unreachable by foot and yet she still wondered if she could make it.

'You're awake.'

The voice came from the shadows, though Harley was sure he could not have been there when she first awoke or she surely would have seen him.

Jonathan Crane was too tall for the attic and stooped even at its highest point, his hair brushing the wooden beams. Harley noticed for the first time how badly his clothes fitted him – his shirt sleeves a few inches too short, revealing the skinny wrists normally hidden under his suit jacket. He seemed anxious – his fingers twitching as he held his hands together as if desperate for some job or another to distract them with. In his face there was none of the nervousness as he regarded Harley with a cool reserve, his eyes never leaving her.

'Where are we?' She asked, her voice hoarse from disuse as she turned her back fully to the safety of the window.

'My family's farm,' Crane replied simply, running his hand along one of the attic's thick beams, finally tearing his eyes from Harley. 'It was the safest place I could think of to hide.'

Slumping down onto the windowsill, Harley closed her eyes and tried to remember how she had ended up in this mess – a prisoner of the colleague she had never wronged. The day at Arkham had been drawing to a close and she had met Dr Crane in the elevator by simple chance. She was the only one who ever bothered to trade niceties with the introverted doctor and so had kept pace with him as they made for the foyer. The gathered police officers had had their backs to the approaching doctors – talking with Dr Arkham as they held out what even from a distance Harley knew must be an arrest warrant – little else would have rattled Dr Arkham to look as desperate as he had. She had turned to Crane to comment, but the look on his face had silenced her instantly. He had lost what little colour he ever had and as he saw Harley regard him – he took his chance to flee. There was no time to react before the needle pierced her arm and her legs buckled – hurtling her into Dr Crane's waiting grip. He had half-walked, half-dragged her back through the asylum and through a fire door as she ineffectually tried to scream. Laid on his back seat, Harley had managed to fight off unconsciousness long enough to see them leave Gotham.

Opening her eyes, she found Crane still stood in the corner of the room, his eyes burning into her. Straightening up, she did her best to look resolute and fix him with a similar gaze, but she fell short.

'Take me home right now, Crane.'

His smile was slow and regretful as he spoke. 'You know I can't do that – not now.'

He crossed the room in just a few strides, his awkward gait almost comical when teamed with the stoop, but Harley could find no humour in the situation. She had known that Crane would not let her leave and yet to be told as much filled her with a horrific terror. She was confused and exhausted – too paralyzed to fight as he led her into the middle of the room, his grip tight on her shoulders. From under the straw, Crane pulled a length of connected cable-ties – a bicycle chain attached to its end. Harley recognised it instantly as a makeshift shackle and barely contained a shiver to find how well prepared he was for a prisoner.

With a gentleness that surprised her more greatly, Crane lifted her foot into the chain, wrapping it tightly around her ankle before he secured the lock, tucking the little key into his pocket. He remained crouched, his gaze on the lock as he cleared his throat, speaking softly.

'Your formative years were shaped by many factors – many emotions. Neglect, love, abuse, happiness, lust, manipulation, hope... Mine was moulded by just one. Maybe once you understand the life I endured here, you will understand why I have done as I have.'

'I don't even know what you _have_ done!' Harley exclaimed, exasperated.

Crane was silent for a long moment before he stood, towering over her as he took her in with an assessing gaze. He finally reached into his back pocket, pulling out a battered moleskin journal that he pressed into hands.

'It is better that you hear my version before what the papers will say,' He began, walking away from her, 'I cannot let you leave this place until you realise – until you have an epiphany such as I did.'

Harley simply stared at him, dumbfounded. She had always found him a little strange but had simply put it down to shyness and a devotion to his work. Now she was beginning to see that, while he appeared polished on the outside – inside he was crumbling – his mind unravelling.

'I will be back later on – you will need certain things I am sure. Until then, try to sleep while you still can.'

He left the room, but the ominous words still hung heavy in the air. It was a long time before Harley could bring herself to move. The sun sank out of sight below the horizon and a bare light bulb sprang to life overhead, shocking her into action. The moleskin diary fell from her hands as she made it to the covered dresser, just within the range of her shackle. Most of the drawers that she pulled at frantically were empty, but in the last she tried, Harley found a photograph. It was badly faded and torn around the edges as if he had simply been forgotten about and left to decay.

Sitting down on the straw, she held the photo in the light and studied it. It showed a young boy, around nine or ten, and a woman that Harley found too old to be the boy's mother. She was stern looking, and had not smiled for the photograph, instead pulling a face like someone had wafted something unpleasant under her nose. Her dress was old fashioned and black like funeral ware and Harley found herself instantly taking a dislike to her, turning her attention to the child. He was tall for his age, though young in the face – his clothes a little too short and clearly in need of replacing, or at least a good scrubbing. Harley knew just by glancing at the boy's pale blue eyes that she was looking at Crane in his youth, before he had adopted his superior air. She wondered who the woman was to him and why their photograph was hidden away in a corner of an attic and found that pondering the possibilities distracted her from her situation.

Crane returned a couple of hours later to find the photograph set on the dresser like a favoured memory, Harley asleep on the floor close by. After a moment of staring in, he turned off the light, leaving her to sleep under the watch of the two unhappy faces in the photograph. He would not disturb what he was sure would be her last untroubled sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Harley sat on the floor, picking at the stale bread in front of her. She had no appetite, but the action gave her something to do, a distraction from feeling the weight of the eyes watching her from across the room. Her ankle was raw from the shackle and the hours she had spent pulling against it but she had learnt to ignore the pain, not wanting to give her captor the satisfaction of seeing her grimace. It had only been two nights that she had been confined to the dusty attic and yet already the strain of the place was showing in her face. Something of the sparkle had left her eyes and her skin seemed sallow and sunken. For the first time, she felt that Arkham might be more comforting than where she found herself now but she doubted she would ever see the grim asylum again. Glancing up, she found Crane was still silently staring at her from his place across the room, stooped to fit under the low beams. This was the longest he had stayed in her prison and his presence set Harley on edge. Especially now she knew what he was capable of.

She had never planned to read the diary he had entrusted her with, not wanting to pander to his whims, but by the time the second evening had crept in on the farm, she had already relented. Crane had given her the meagre supper of dry bread and stagnated water, that had also made up her lunch, in silence, ignoring her pleads for release or explanation. As he had been turning to leave, the discarded diary had caught his eye and he had kicked it across the straw-bedded floor to her before leaving. In desperation, Harley had seized the little moleskin book and begun to read.

At only ten pages in, she had lost her appetite completely. The spider-crawl writing, crammed into every spare inch of paper, detailed a hidden world that had existed under the floor of the asylum where she had worked – a world dominated over by Crane. Each of his draconian experiments were documented with careful detail, down to the very pitch of the subject's screams. Unable to handle anymore, knowing the man responsible for the sickening account waited in the house below, Harley had cast the journal aside and wept herself to sleep in self-pity.

Now the third evening was upon them and Harley laboured over her food while Crane stalked in the shadows with his ever-alert eyes. She had said nothing about the journal and yet she could tell from the way Crane watched her, that he knew she had read it. They remained silent, Harley through fear, Crane through patience, as she swallowed down the bread laboriously, playing for time. When the plate was empty, she turned her head away, eyes falling onto the photograph she had set on the dresser.

'Who is she?' Harley asked, her voice little more than a whisper as she clung to the mundane in the hope she might never have to speak of the journal.

For a long moment, no sound came from the far side of the room and Harley dared to believe that Crane had left her. When she turned her head, however, he was closer than before, bent over and staring at the photograph with an eyes that seemed to see nothing. He had crossed the room silently, and the sudden proximity made Harley's breath catch in her throat, though Crane paid her no attention.

'She is my Grandmother. Or rather my Great-Grandmother, though I never made the distinction.'

Crane turned his head, regarding Harley as if he was surprised to see her there. Slowly, he held out his hand, his long fingers uncurling like a spider that someone had thought dead coming back to life. Harley gritted her teeth and remained sat on the straw. After everything she had read in the journal, and everything she now knew Crane to be capable of, she would not give herself over voluntarily.

A slow, mocking smile came over Crane's lips as he watched her, recoiling in spite of her attempts at bravery. Fear was radiating from her, but it was not enough. Reaching forward, he grabbed Harley by the arm and forced her to her feet, his strength enough over her now she was fatigued with hunger. With rough movements that caused her to squeal, he bent her arm up behind her back and marched her to the window, her shackle going taunt and digging into her already battered ankle. Unable to stop herself, she screamed out in pain, but Crane seemed deaf to her. Letting go of her arm, he instead grasped her hair, forcing her head against the glass and he pointed with a bony finger across the farm.

'You see where the grass grows in that mound by the coal shed? That's where she is now. The grave never sunk in. Even dead, the bitch won't disappear.'

By now, Harley was trembling, biting her lip to contain whimpers of pain and terror as she looked out over the silent farm. The little town she had noticed before seemed even farther removed, like it too was recoiling from the dark house.

Suddenly, Crane let go of her, and spoke with a much more delicate tone. 'She would have never let you in this house. But she doesn't make the rules anymore.'

As silently as he had advanced, Crane retreated to the far side of the room, leaving Harley stood shaking at the window, her eyes clenched shut against the site of the unsanctified grave.

'Why did you do it, Jonathan?' She asked with a weak voice.

'You know, my whore of a mother never even held me,' came Crane's reply, as if he had not heard her. 'She gave me up as soon as I was born to my witch of a Great-Grandmother. She had scars herself from this place and she surrendered me here all the same. How ugly must her son have been, to make a mother send him straight to hell?'

'The patients, Crane,' Harley continued, her bravery returning as she opened her eyes, watching the back of the man she had worked under for years. 'You were the person they were supposed to trust.'

'My Grandmother refused to intervene as well. Out of pride, the old witch told me. What pride had she any right to? She never knew my mother's father either.'

'Benson. You told everyone he'd suffocated himself with a pillowcase...'

'Whores and witches, the whole line of them. Cruel, unworthy wretches. I'd of been one too, I have no doubt, if I'd been born a girl...'

'...but you'd really injected him with some hallucinogenic and poured beetles down his throat?!'

Harley was shouting now, and Crane's head whipped around at the sound, his eyes narrowing as he looked at her.

'You're pitying a child abuser, Harleen. Or had you forgotten that little fact about Benson? Did your high moral stance blind you? Is it really wrong to make a man like that experience his worst fears as he dies?'

'What about the others? Some of them had done nothing wrong. They were recovering, but now they'll never leave, not after what you've done to them.'

'What I've done to them?' Crane repeated, his voice rising as a malicious smirk returned to his face. 'My dear, I've put them on the path to freedom! If they are strong enough, they'll emerge on the other side of the fire as new men.'

'And if they're not strong enough?'

'Then they are unworthy of your pity.'

Harley turned her face away in disgust, looking out again over the farm. Night was creeping in, rotting the yellow fields and turning them gray. Her fear was still there, but it was quietened by her anger and disgust for Crane. He had used his patients as puppets for his experiments, preying on their vulnerability. But she would not give in so easily.

'Get out.'

The smirk did not leave Crane's face as he opened the door to leave, keeping his eyes on Harley for as long as he could. He could see the resolve forming in her, but it did not worry him. Fear brought everyone to their knees in the end, no matter how strong they strived to be.

'Finish the journal,' he instructed. 'Tomorrow I will start to make you see as I do.'


	3. Chapter 3

'Put your hands behind your back.'

Harley obeyed, keeping her head held high as Crane bound her wrists together with an old rope. It was frayed and worn in places, irritating her skin instantly but she gritted her teeth, unwilling to show her discomfort so easily. Once her arms were secured, Crane tied her ankles, leaving a small length of rope between them so she could still walk. It was the same set-up Harley had seen a thousand times when convicts were brought into the asylum, and it made her shudder to realise that she might soon be just another experiment in Crane's journal.

The shackle that had kept her tethered in the attic was removed, pulling off a layer of healing skin with it and causing Harley to hiss in pain. If Crane noticed, he did not let it show, continuing silently with securing the knots of rope. It was a crude effort, for a man who had once constructed a working laboratory out of discarded asylum supplies, but somehow the rope seemed more fitting to the creaky farm than steal cuffs ever would. The world might be marching on, innovating new ways to keep its occupants restrained, but the Keeny farm would always be stuck in the past, its gates rattling with Victorian morals and Medieval cruelty.

Navigated out of her prison, Harley found she was right in thinking her room had only made up some part of the attic. A labyrinth of dusty boxes and moth-eaten linen, blocking the light from the other windows, took up the rest of the space, making it impossible for Harley to try and gauge just how large the farmhouse actually was. She stumbled over the steps, unable to move her legs properly, but Crane never let her fall, keeping a firm grasp on her shoulder that kept her upright as he manoeuvred her through the house. They passed through the upstairs quickly, all of the doors shut so Harley saw nothing but a blur of doors and wood-panel walls. The house's main staircase had been built with an ideal of grandeur, but now seemed rickety and decayed. Every surface was covered in a thick film of dust, as if Crane had moved through the house like a ghost, not touching a thing.

After stumbling along a back passage, still steered by the pressure of Crane's hand on her shoulder, Harley entered the second room of the Keeny Farmhouse that she had been sanctioned to see. It was a kitchen festering with grime and the stale smell of disuse; the sun kept out by old newspapers taped to the windows. Despite the warm weather outside, Harley shivered as she stood in the dim kitchen, her arms already beginning to ache from being held behind her for so long.

'I spent all of my early years in this room,' Crane began, his sudden breaking of the silence making his prisoner jump. 'Before the witch finally gave me a bedroom, I had a crib in this room. It was the only one she could afford to heat, but she refused to on principle.'

Harley turned her head, scanning the room and struggling to picture a child anywhere amongst the gloom. On one of the counters, she noticed a television set, the most modern item in the whole room. The dust had been wiped off of the screen, betraying recent use.

'Are they looking for me?'

'Yes,' Crane replied, pacing around to the television. 'The Gotham Police, the FBI... there's even a private detective that Dr Arkham hired.'

Harley's eyes closed in a moment of relief. It would only be a matter of time before they traced Crane to his childhood home and rescued her. If she could hold on just a few more days...

'It is strange though,' Crane continued, cutting through her thoughts with his cold and calculating tone, 'that there have been no family appeals. No mother pleading for the return of her daughter...'

'Crane...'

Harley's jaw set in a scowl at the mention of her family, but Crane only laughed, shaking his head as he looked at her.

'Now, now, don't get stroppy. I've already told you how my mother hated me - you're in perfectly understanding company.'

He crossed the room, still wearing a trace of his mocking laughter. Pulling a chair out from the table, he moved to stand behind Harley, the proximity making her shiver as he unwound the ropes from her wrists.

'If I remember correctly, you grew up in New York? You've lost the accent well.'

Harley remained silent, yielding as he led her by the shoulders into the chair, stretching her tense arms as inconspicuously as she could.

'I've never been to New York,' Crane continued, crouching at the side of her to bind her hands again, only this time to the front of her. 'I can't say I know anything about the different boroughs.'

Watching as the knots were formed against her arms, Harley again said nothing. Remaining squatted on the floor, Crane looked up at her, an eyebrow raised as he pushed his glasses further up his noise with a crooked finger. There was something off-putting in his eyes that Harley couldn't explain but she refused to look away, desperate not to weaken herself even now.

'Come now, Dr Quinzel, you know how these things work. You engage the captor, build a rapport. I thought your final thesis had been on Stockholm Syndrome? There needs to be some effort on your part.'

There was a pause. The farmhouse was silent, save for the caw of crows swooping overhead.

'I'm from Brooklyn,' came Harley's quiet response as she turned her face away from him, focusing on the empty screen of the television.

Crane did not reply until he had taken up a seat across the table from her, as if this was another session in the asylum therapy room and Harley just another number in the system to be diagnosed and cast aside. She had sat in on his sessions when she had been an intern and recognised the cool, detached tone he used with her now as the same one he addressed his patients with.

'Brooklyn,' he repeated, dragging the word out slowly. 'I fancy we had very similar childhoods, you and I. When you break it down.'

Harley's eyes roamed around the large and unfeeling kitchen before settling on Crane, the spider masquerading as a man.

'I doubt it.'

Crane's lips curled up in an unfriendly smile. 'Let us just agree to disagree.'

Turning in his chair, he removed a small leather folder from one of the termite-invested draws in the counter, opening it on the table so that it faced her. It was a portrait and Harley instantly recognised the subject as Crane's Great-Grandmother. Whether the portrait had aged badly, or because of the poor light in the kitchen, Harley could not tell, but the woman's eyes seemed to be lifeless black pits that stared up out of the picture, chilling her just to look at it.

'For the first three years of my life, this woman showed me neglect and disinterest,' Crane stated, his voice now hardly more than a hiss. 'After that, I began to see her sadistic side. By the time I was ten, I had experienced more terror at the hands of that woman than most grown men will see in a lifetime.'

He rose from the chair with deliberate movements, retreating to a dark corner out of Harley's sight. Her heart thudded a little louder than usual as she waited for his return, the dark eyes of his Great-Grandmother boring into her as she sat alone in the quiet kitchen. When her captor returned, he was holding an antique cane of ebony wood, tipped with some kind of brass handle. He came alongside her chair, holding the cane so she could examine it, finding herself following the intricate pattern of birds and filigree with her eyes, despite how much she wanted to feign nonchalance.

'Even infants fear damage to themselves,' Crane stated, 'they fear bodily pain. My Great-Grandmother was of the school of thought that this fear was what breed discipline. _Spare the rod, spoil the child_, so they say...'

Crane struck the cane across Harley's face with such suddenness that she had no time to prepare for the blow. The brass hit her with a force that almost knocked her off the chair and robbed her of her breath. Blood gathered under the surface of her cheek, instantly swelling into an angry welt as tears sprung up in her eyes. Almost unable to believe that the meek man she had known for so many years had shown the audacity to hit her, Harley simply froze, lopsided on the chair and breathing heavily.

The second blow awakened her sense of anger and self-preservation and she turned her head upwards, glaring at Crane with all the venom she could muster. She had expected to see glee in his expression, some unhinged betrayal of enjoyment in beating her but instead she only found disgust. Whether it was for herself or his own actions, she hardly had time to decide before another strike of the cane hit her in the stomach, eliciting a sharp cry of pain.

Gasping for breath, Harley did not react as Crane threw aside the cane, pulling the ropes off of her wrists and ankles as if they had not been tied at all. With one final smack across the face, this time courtesy of Crane's own hand, she was lurched off of the chair, landing hard on the stone floor. The tears were now falling freely down her face, but Harley refused to sob. She tensed, waiting for another hit, but it never came. She could hear Crane's laboured breathing just a few feet away from her but he did not move any closer. Swallowing down her pain, Harley looked over her shoulder and found that her captor was leering at her from across the room, his eyes wide and unreadable.

'Well, don't just sit there. This might be your only chance – _run_.'

Not stopping to try and understand his sudden change of ideas, Harley scrambled to her feet and dashed from the room, using the wall to help keep her aching body upright as she fled down the corridor. She crossed the foyer in barely a couple of steps, picking up the sprite's pace she had learnt as a gymnast as she made her way to the heavy oak door. It was unlocked and despite its apparent weight, it yielded easily to her, swinging inwards and bathing the dreary farmhouse in sunlight. Glancing back, Harley could just make out Crane's shadow advancing down the corridor from the kitchen and she wasted no time in darting over the threshold. Her body was on fire. The new injuries stung bitterly, while her legs ached from her confinement. But she would not give up. Running with everything she had left in her, she made straight down the drive, yellow fields flanking her on both sides. She ran for what felt like an eternity, her body screaming in pain and her mind swimming but the town seemed to get no closer.

Unable to continue, she collapsed to her knees, weeping openly for her situation. She would never make it to the town, even if she walked rather than ran. The food Crane had given her was the bare minimum to keeping her in her right mind, but it was not enough to sustain her body for the long journey into the town on foot. There was no place to go but back to the farmhouse, where Crane waited in the shadows with his experiments and shackles. Harley screamed until she was hoarse, hoping someone would hear her, but no help arrived. All she could think of was the macabre experiments she had read about in the moleskin journal and the pain from the beating Crane had given her.

'Please,' she hissed to no-one, unable to muster any more energy to shout, 'don't let me go back there.'


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: This chapter took me so long to write and I'm not 100% content I got it perfect but hopefully you guys will still like it!**

* * *

This time, when Harley came-to, she was face down in the straw that littered the attic, her head throbbing with a migraine that was two-parts dehydration and starvation, and one-part trauma. Unwilling to sit up, she stretched her arms and legs, the familiar ankle shackle rattling as she moved. So her escape attempt really had been useless, she thought as she lay watching a small spider crawl past her, making its own way out of the Keeny Farmhouse. The wounds on her face still burned, one eye swollen half-shut, and her breathing came in shallow bursts, the impact on her chest having fractured a couple of ribs. It took all the effort she had for Harley to roll onto her side, away from the sun. She coughed, the action sending fresh pain through her lungs, seizing what little strength she had left and forcing her back down into the straw.

'I'm afraid that there's not much to be done about cracked ribs, but to let them heal on their own.'

The voice spread like a chill from the far corner of the room, freezing Harley in place so she could not even blink. From where she lay, she could see the shadows in the corner shift as Crane sat up in his chair.

'Now this isn't the spunky little intern I remember,' he mocked, unfolding himself from the chair. 'There's no reason to be scared, Harleen. Not for now, anyway.'

He paced closer, Harley watching his feet advance like a child hiding under their bed in a home invasion. But she had no protection, no sanctuary above her to shield her from view. She had no strength left in to resist when he crouched beside her, pulling her up by the shoulders and forcing her to sit, her back against the dresser as her own body could not support her. Crane lingered over her, assessing the bruises and scrapes on her face.

'Why did you try and run?' He asked, his voice soft, almost soothing.

'Who wouldn't have?' Harley whispered in reply, none of her fear disappearing despite his calm words. 'You told me to.'

Crane's lips twitched in a momentary smirk as he sat back across from her in the straw. He looked awkward, a mass of limbs too long to know how to arrange themselves and Harley hoped he never got comfortable. She wanted to be left alone, to wallow in self-pity and despair, but Crane was cruel enough to deny her even that.

'Fight or flight,' he continued softly, eyes settled on Harley to measure the slightest of reactions. 'The base human reactions to a perceived threat. It's a depressing reflection of the state of human nature that most choose flight, despite how brave they might think themselves. You ran, when it would have made more sense to stay.'

Harley's blood heated at his words and she scowled up at him. 'You'd just beaten me!'

'Precisely. And so your plan was to try and escape while injured and hungry, on foot, to a town you could never conceivably reach. You were a gymnast, Harleen, you could have played to your strengths and dodged around me, found something heavy and hit me over the head with it. Then all you'd have needed to do was find a phone and call for help.'

Suddenly, Harley felt sick. She had always thought she was clever, maybe not a genius, but smart enough to get herself out of trouble. It was how she'd survived her childhood, how she'd manipulated her way up her class in college and how she'd wedged herself into a coveted position at Arkham. And yet all that cleverness had abandoned her at the moment she'd needed it most. Crane was right, overpowering him would have been easy enough if she'd been careful but she doubted he'd ever give her another opportunity.

'It's exhilarating, isn't it?' Crane whispered, his eyes flashing wildly, 'the fear. Trying to flee and knowing something might be gaining on you... Why do you think those dreams are the ones that stick with you the longest after waking? The endorphins, the adrenaline - fear is as primal as joy. If you learn to master it, embrace it, then fear can be your greatest strength.'

He leaned in closer with every word until his face hovered close to Harley's own. There was something dangerous in his expression that kept her silent for fear that one wrong word would tip his mood wildly in the other direction.

'You're not a simple crazy in a cage, Harleen. You don't have to crumble in the face of your phobias. Make them a part of you, and you will become stronger than you ever imagined.'

'And what if I can't?'

'That would be... unfortunate.'

The threat hung heavy in the air even though it had been unspoken, crushing down the last of Harley's little hopes. She was scared of what was going to happen to her and she couldn't imagine a day under that roof when she wouldn't be afraid. What Crane was proposing was hardly ground-breaking; people all around the world were trained to be fearless and to overcome what once would terrify them, but Harley doubted that any of them would face the same sort of repercussions as she would if she failed.

They sat in silence, no clock ticking to betray how long they simply stayed there, Harley's fear settling in the pit of her stomach so it was a distant unease. He was unsettling now, with his eyes that never seemed to blink, but she was surprised at how normal he looked just sat there with her in the straw. Crane had hidden his true self so well and for so many years, that it seemed invisible even now. His feigned normality was hardly comforting, but it was at least a little calming.

'Your grandmother tormented you,' she whispered when the silence became too much, turning her eyes from Crane's stony expression to the old photograph on the dresser. 'And yet here you are, doing exactly the same to other people.'

'My grandmother was a hag, but she was clever. She understood control. I do not have to revere her memory to respect that control. I doubt I will be remembered fondly, but I will have had droves cower before me.'

'And that makes it worthwhile?'

'It makes it better.'

He smiled wryly, pushing his slipping glasses back onto the bridge of his nose in an almost graceful movement.

'You've come a long way, Harleen,' Crane continued, his voice full of sly derision. 'You somehow fought your way into one of the most prolific asylums in the country.'

'I earned myself a scholarship to GCU and I worked hard.' Harley stated, trying to be calm but feeling her anger already starting to get the better of her.

'Ah yes, your gymnastics. I'm sure you had to do a lot of bending to get yourself to the top of your class.'

Harley bit her lip to stop herself saying something she'd regret. While Crane seemed like nothing of a threat now, she knew better than to believe her instincts and instead trust her knowledge. She'd read what he could do when he wanted to be cruel, and she just wanted his vindictiveness to stay in his words.

'I bet it didn't take you long to work out how you would control people,' Crane stated with a smirk. 'How quickly did you realise that hitching your skirt up an inch would make all the boys offer to carry your books? How many times did your neckline dip low when you had a project due and you'd neglected it?'

'If you're going to call me a whore, Crane, just come out and say it.'

He laughed, the mocking sound bouncing off the walls and echoing in Harley's ear.

''Whore' was a word my Great-Grandmother reserved for my mother and you are nothing like her. Marion Keeny was used for sex; you used sex to get ahead. You took control over those around you with methods some disagree with. I told you we weren't all that dissimilar.'

'There's a difference,' Harley hissed, 'between torturing someone and sleeping with them.'

'Perhaps. But when you come down to what each party gets in leverage, there's not a real distinction.'

Harley turned her head away in disgust, her gaze settling on the crucifix watching over the room. She had been raised Jewish, but the image of the crucified Christ was a common one, and even she recognized something 'off' about this particular crucifix. While artists often gave their own interpretation of Jesus, he was normally either sad or glorious on the cross. This Jesus, however, was vengeful.

'I don't suppose it took you long,' Crane mused, his eyes still fixed on Harley though she was now focused on the crucifix, 'to find your certain brand of power.'

The last of the adrenaline that had powered her since she'd woken left Harley as she exhaled. Her wounds were stinging, her head pounding. She just wanted to sleep and pretend that this was all some horrible dream. There was nothing left in her to fight, to keep her pride intact and her anger responsive. What was the point in trying to maintain her professional facade of bravado and strength now?

'I was fourteen.'

Crane smirked at that, nodding his head slowly. 'A little younger than I had expected. And what did you gain with your first notch on the bedpost?'

'Just the notch.'

'I don't think that's true, is it Harleen? Think back. That boy offered you more than a tick in the experience column.'

'I was fourteen and naive, Crane,' Harley replied wearily, 'I was hardly playing sexual politics back then.'

'Maybe not consciously. Who was the boy?'

'Some friend of my brother's. His name was Mark.'

'A pretty boy? Star quarter-back?' His voice dripped with undisguised disgust.

'No. He was flunking out of school to hang around his dad's auto-shop. He always smelt of gas and oil.'

'Hardly an impressive suitor. I can't imagine you having low standards even as fourteen-year-old white trash.'

Harley shrugged, the insult washing over her. 'He was always hanging around my house, trying to get my attention. One day he got it.'

'And your brother didn't mind having his friend commandeered?'

'My brother would do pretty much anything if it meant he got to hang out with Mark's gang.'

Crane was silent for a moment, his eyes flicking over Harley's face as she lost herself in her memories. It was a time she had tried to block out, and yet now the crowded visions of her family's tiny home in Brooklyn was a comforting escape.

'What happened to our young Mark?' He eventually asked.

'He went to jail for grand theft auto.'

'And your brother?'

Harley turned her head, meeting Crane's gaze, though her eyes seemed glazed over. Exhaustion was pulling her back into the blackness of sleep.

'Right there with him.'


End file.
